Random Friday

Can you believe this new year is two weeks old already??? WTF?

So far this year I've managed to buy a new umbrella (it's awesome, it's this one), some CDs (how retro of me!) catch up with a couple of peeps on Failbook, sorry, Facebook, one of whom has had twins since I last saw her, go to Basingstoke, watch a lot of snooker, knit 3/4 of a sock and a bunch of shawl AND make progress on the sweater and go to work. It's going fairly well I think, the only things I haven't managed yet are winning the lottery and seducing Christian Horner. Well, the year is young :-D

Oh and I joined Twitter, but you won't find me tweeting much. I just live vicariously through other people.

Basingstoke is quite nice! I was surprised. I had a vision of it being all 70's brutalist and just plain boring but the bit I saw was okay. Admittedly it was mainly the ring road and the shopping centre (made famous by Jeremy Clarkson driving a Ford Fiesta around it) but it was pretty good. Excellent branch of Lush, which gave me a happy. And lots of samples. I likes samples. Unfortunately the super-speshul conditioner for my speshul snowflake hair isn't as good as the Aussie industrial-grade stuff, but it smells a damn sight better. The Aussie goop smells like rancid air freshener, but it works. Dilemma. Me and my first world problems, huh?

Southern Electric suck. That is all on that subject.

My former letting agents are muppets. I FINALLY got my deposit back, today. I moved out in NOVEMBER!!! Anyway, I have it. This is fortunate as I need to go buy furniture...

I have been weaving. I made a curtain for the bathroom, as I reckon my neighbours at the back can see mah boobs when I'm in the shower :-) Not that this is a great treat for them or anything...



Saori curtain. I finished it off and hung it today, so when I have some decent light I'll try and photograph it in situ. It's pretty neat, if a bit lumpy. I had the usual issues with the warp, it was so varied it was very tricky to beam it evenly, especially as I couldn't find my special card warp separator. Anyway it is done and seems to be pretty effective at blocking the boobie-view. Now I just need to make something for my lounge windows...

~♥~

It's All Parcels, All The Time

My poor postman should get some kind of award. I will have to get him a Christmas present this year I think :-) Well, him and the regular couriers...

So. First up.

Combs.





Awesome. I love them already. They're from Wingham, made by them to the classic Peter Teal design. I've used them on some BFL and some Hebridean, with very pleasing results:



The Heb I rough-combed, just a couple of passes then pulled off the sliver, whereas the BFL I planked the sliver then re-combed it. It really wants another pass for a true worsted prep, but I'm not that particular at the moment ;-) I am SO pleased with these combs, I can hardly tell you. They even managed to rip into a nasty, tangly bit of Heb and produce something smooth and spinnable and lovely. Recommended. Yes, they're expensive (you ever seen Teal combs for sale?) but they are beautifully made and finished.

I got a new phone! I've finally ventured into smartphone territory, with an HTC Desire (I refuse to go down the Apple black hole) Very pleased with it so far, I'm still exploring all the goodies and clever stuffs. I think it may well be brighter than me. Deepest joy so far is having Google Maps at my fingertips.

I did some tailspinning. Good fun, but SLOOOOW. I think I will do some more then make myself a crazypants sheepy scarf-thing.


Locks waiting for spinning


The finished article

I finally finished the Saori blanket, and it's been pressed into immediate service on my bed! I've been waiting to find the inspiration to sew it together...



Really pleased with it. It's light, warm and very tactile. I need to do some more - I want to make a skirt. Yeah. Wish me luck with that.

Speaking of skirts, I've been on an eBay kick this week and managed to score a GORGEOUS Per Una layered skirt for less than £5, which gave me an enormous happy :-)
And it fits. Yay me!

I've also had a squishy parcel of yarn for another KAL, a gorgeous pair of boots (I will take a picture and shows you) and have orders coming for new slippers, bits for the phone, and replacement earpads for my headphones - I think I have corrosive earholes :-)

I've been making more weavie squares too:



which might become a shawl. Maybe. We'll see.

In other news, I've been watching cricket a lot. Champions League Twenty20, to be exact. Oh cricket, how I love thee, let me count the ways...I'm very out-of-touch with the cricketing world, and have been for a few years now. Ever since Sky Sports got most of it, and I had to be at work all week rather than glued to the sofa at 10.55 on a Thursday, waiting for Richie Benaud's dulcet "Good morning everybody". However I still love cricket, in all forms. It's such a civilised game. I was first introduced to the game by my granddad, who had played in his youth. He called me into the lounge one Saturday and said "You need to watch this. History in the making." He sat me down, and as we watched, he explained the rules and I was hooked. I can even tell you which game. England v India at Lord's, 1990, when Graham Gooch made 333 and 123, still a record for the most runs scored in a single Test match. We spent many happy Saturdays boring the rest of the family to death, Granddad shouting at the batsmen, the umpire, the bowlers, fielders and occasionally the commentators as well. I even skived a day off from school to go with Granddad to watch the Minor Counties play Australia at Stone, one of my best memories. We had a fantastic day, I met Allan Border, David Boon, Shane Warne and Mark Waugh, got all their autographs and watched Border and Boon hefting sixes over the wall of the ground into Lichfield Road :-) It's one thing I miss in Scotland. You can't go out on a Sunday and pass village greens hosting local matches. It's a shame, as it is a fine way to spend a sunny Sunday, sitting under a tree on a boundary somewhere, with a picnic, watching a nice game of cricket.

Howzat?

♥

More fame

I shan't be able to fit my head through the door at this rate.

See here - Jane is busy putting everyone's KAL projects onto her blog. There's some AWESOME work on there! Go and have a look. I'll wait.

Not a great deal has been happening here other than Izzy (the trainee knitter, remember?) coming back from another leg of her trip and bringing me FOUR Hebridean fleeces. Four. What's really nice is these are truly from the Hebrides - from Oronsay to be exact. I forgot to take a photo (duh) but the fleeces vary in colour and texture in a really cool way. There's a wiry grey one, two with sunbleached, gingery tips and one mainly soft black with distinct locks. Interesting to see such variety in one breed!

So now I have to start working out what I'm doing with them :-) I've started the scouring with the roughest fleece, a chunk of that is in a fermented suint bath as we speak. I think I need to go and buy a couple of really big containers. Maybe a dustbin?

In other news, I'm still spinning that lovely ArtemisArtemis fibre, it's so nice I'm deliberately dragging it out :-) I also pulled a chunk off the Texel fleece and have got that on the Golding. I'm shooting for a heavy laceweight, but I don't know how much it will bloom and poof out. I'm spinning it literally straight off the fleece - no carding, no scouring, just "as is." It's a really nice clean fleece in the main so not a problem to work this way. I will need to scour the remainder at some point though otherwise it will go all sticky and nasty.

I'm also knitting (of course) - I finished the Travelling Woman shawl (photos to come). I'm quite pleased, I couldn't get the curved top edge to block out right so I blocked it straight and pulled the whole shawl out widthways. I still have a bunch of yarn left, I wish I'd made the shawl wider in hindsight. However it's still really nice so putting it down as a success :-)
I'm now ploughing on with the Shetland Hap, I'm onto the border (hurray) and just started the third colour overall. Only 70-odd ever-increasing rows to go, then it's edging time. I'm trying not to think about it too much. Gulp.

Also this means I only have seven WIPs listed on Ravelry! Blimey. I really want to clear the decks a bit before I scratch the startitis itch again.

So I finally got the Saori blanket laid out and have started hemming the pieces. There's some variation in length (hardly surprising) so I have a bit of a job to come to sort that out. It looks grand though, and I think it will be nice and warm but light. The different textures are really great.

I also had a play with the peg loom I brought back from Leek. It's good fun, and once you've sorted out the warps the weaving goes very quickly. It's surprising how much weft you get through though! I suppose you are producing a very weft-faced weave so I shouldn't really be all that surprised. I'm thinking some unspun fleece would make a gorgeous bedside rug, maybe combined with some handspun. I also have a bunch of sisal cord which would probably make a fab doormat. Another project for the list!

Formula 1
Well Hungary was far more exciting than I'd feared! That was a relief as it's now the summer break so no race for four weeks. I will have withdrawal symptoms! Thank God for Eurosport. I was annoyed as the electricity board managed to cut my power off for three and a half hours so I missed the final part of qually. That's my favourite bit! I was chuffed to see Pedro de la Rosa finish so high, go Sauber! and the Lotus was much improved as well. I was also delighted to see Rubens Barrichello get one over on Michael, and horrified at his manoeuvre which nearly stuffed Rubens into the pit wall. I am not impressed. He's not improved his attitude with a few years off. Anyway, next race is Spa which is one of my favourites.

and I think that's it, other than if you haven't been watching "Sherlock" on the BBC, you have missed out and need to catch up ASAP. Brilliant.

~*~

OH OH OH yes I forgot to mention I've added the "reactions" thingies to my posts. So just like Ravelry, you can press my buttons! Go on, click away :-)

Weaving WIPs

Part I is finished, just taking a turn around the washing machine. I used a crazy warp crammed and spaced. I had a lot of problems as I got down the warp with variable tension, but when you're using really random yarns like I did, and at varying setts, that's hardly surprising :-) Also I had trouble beaming it evenly - it's really a four-handed job, and I only have two...and I was naughty and didn't use anything to separate the warp layers on the back beam. Yep, revoke my weaver's card already :-)

I have woven in a hem of plain weave in a nice plain wool, and once it was off the loom, I trimmed the warps down to about 1.5" and then ran the edges through the sewing machine. I love this new machine SO HARD, it has a diamond-y stitch setting which makes a fabulous edge. It behaved itself beautifully as well. The trick now will be to match the other pieces for length :-) Hopefully any differences will be easy to take up in the hemming. That's the plan anyway...

There's quite a lot of handspun in the weft. I spun up 100g of Falkland tops to a super bulky thick and thin on my new toy:



Caroline with her new jumbo flyer fitted. Getting the bobbins in and out is a PITA but otherwise it's fab. I also spun up some Wensleydale, and a couple of batts which I drumcarded. It's made for a nice variety of textures in the weft.

So without further ado, here is some weaving p0rn for you.

SAORI musings

As promised :-)

I first saw SAORI weaving on Ravelry (no surprise there then) - made by Terri in Canada. Her website and blog are both great and gave me lots of inspiration - and also a lot of affirmation that freeform weaving could be a valid form of expression and could also retain the functional appeal of textile. Also, like a lot of my craft stuff, I like to wander into the free-range realm quite often, and it's nice to know I'm not alone in that place :-)

Some more digging led me to research the SAORI philosophy in a bit more depth. SAORI is actually a trademark now of the people who make the looms, but it is much more than a name or a technique. I recommend you have a look at SAORI Worcester's site, especially here and here, which describe it far better than I ever could :-)

I think what appeals to me most about this philosophy is the celebration of the unique, the no-mistakes approach and the meditative qualities. Something that clicked with me was one of Misao Jo's principles:
Kikai to ningen no chigai o kangaeyou / Consider the differences between machines and people

Hmmm. Yeah. I like that one. It takes me back to my days of studying ceramics and the importance of the hand of the potter in bringing a piece to life. Perfection never interested me when working with clay (still doesn't) - one of the many clashes I had with my idiot lecturers :-) It also calls to mind the philosophies of William Morris and John Ruskin. Interesting. I could chew over this one for a while, and probably will :-)

And this principle I adore:

Kira-kira kagayaku me o motou / Let's look out through eyes that shine

Being open to seeing beauty in everything (remember Morris again!) is something that I've strived for (striven? strived?) over the years. It has been noticed that I look at the world in a "funny way", or see things that other people don't notice. This is probably because I look, rather than just seeing. I tend to bump into things and am at risk of falling down holes, because I'm always gawping somewhere and not looking where I'm going :-)

I just had an interesting thought. I reckon, if I had been born five or ten years ago, rather than 30-odd (aargh) I'd probably have been diagnosed as autistic already :-) I think I meet quite a few of the criteria. Hah. One part of this is the one aspect of SAORI that I really appreciate, but only on an intellectual level, which is the community / group aspect. I think it's great, but I'm not sure I could do it. My social uncomfortable-ness (I can't think of another way of putting it!) seems to be increasing as I get older, rather than decreasing. Though saying that, maybe this sort of activity would be beneficial. More to ponder on. Like-minded people and all that. I spend a lot of time, when I'm in the company of other people, thinking "what am I doing here? What are they thinking? Why am I not having fun like they are? I really don't want to be here..." It used to bother me a LOT, but I think I got over that. Now I don't really care :-) and spend as much time away from social situations as possible. I got better things to do...

Anyway, enough cod-psychology for now. I'm a third of the way through sleying the reed so I need to extract digit and go thread warps. Pictures soon, promise.

~*~